My father, Kenneth Mason, who has died aged 95, was of a generation we can only marvel at, going straight from school to fight in the second world war. Aged 18, he joined the aircraft carrier HMS Vindex as an air direction officer, helping to protect merchant convoys supplying the Russians on the infamous Murmansk Run.
Severe weather and ice fields were common and floating mines, submarines and surface craft a constant menace. Ships and men had a one in three chance of returning, and with gales and ice on the flight deck, planes often overshot on landing or failed to re-find the ship at night. Like many, Kenneth would not talk about his wartime experiences, yet in his self-effacing, charming and good humoured way he epitomised the bravery of those times.
Born in London, Kenneth was the only child of George Mason and his wife, Maud (nee Doswell). He went to Raynes Park school on the edge of south-west London, where he began to hone his writing skills. After leaving school in 1939 he found a summer job as a cub reporter on a local paper, but had to postpone his plans for university as war loomed; a few months later, aged 18, he signed up for the Royal Naval Reserve.
After the war he became a Fleet Street reporter on the Daily Sketch and later other broadsheets. Money was tight, so he also worked as a speech writer for Harold Macmillan, did a stint as a scriptwriter on BBC radio serial drama Mrs Dale’s Diary and was a press officer for the land speed record holder Donald Campbell, who needed publicity to attract sponsorship.
Kenneth also started a publishing business, Kenneth Mason Publications, in 1957. After initially struggling, the business grew and he was responsible, on his own, for getting more than 500 titles published. However he soon discovered that being introduced as a publisher meant being buttonholed by people wanting to see their work in print. So when asked what he did for living, he always replied “bookmaker”.
Having moved both his family and his business to the West Sussex/Hampshire border in the mid-1960s, he assembled a team to produce a prototype book reader, in the manner of what we would now recognise as a Kindle. It worked, and was patented, but the batteries were not advanced enough to make it viable and the patent expired.
Kenneth also set up the consortium that won a licence to run the independent radio station Radio Victory, which served Portsmouth for a decade from the mid-70s, and involved himself in various charity work, including with the Emsworth Museum in Hampshire. For the last 20 years of his life he lived in Westbourne, West Sussex.
Outside of work, Kenneth devoted his life to his family and his passion for sailing. He met Marjorie Edwards, who was also a Londoner, while on shore leave in 1944, and they married two years later. They had two sons, me and Michael. Marjorie died in 2001 and Michael in 2015.
